The Oregon: Year One - The Tale of The Biffing

This story takes place in late March of 2001, just a little bit before Mike moved in. Before he became a resident of the 117, he’d come over on the weekends when most of us had off work from our crappy factory jobs and kick everyone’s ass at Super Smash Bros with Donkey Kong on the N-64. I still maintain that Donkey Kong is cheating to this day. Or wed just sit around and watch Knight Rider or old school Star Trek or any infomercial with Billy Mays in it. You know, only quality uses of our valuable time. At the time, Mike didn’t drink. Sure, he’d come over and watch us drink and maybe make a pre-Stark County IHOP/Waffle House Denny’s run since he was the only one with the ability to operate a motor vehicle or a cotton gin legally, but we could never talk or berate him into drinking. Then one day Mike and his lady friend hit a rough patch and broke up and he came over depressed to the point that he didn’t even take pleasure in Donkey Konging anyone and everyone that came into the room. He’d just have DK grab you and jump off the edge of the screen, effectively killing both parties involved. This, to me, was a cry for help. We tried everything to cheer up our poor sad faced friend. We rented a pony and had a magic show. No smile. We paid the guy extra so Mikey could ride the pony. Not even a giggle. Mike was a sad panda and there was no cheering him up. Sure, none of this stuff really happened but we talked about it, and I’m pretty sure DW drew pictures of what it would really look like. I typed in “pony rental” on Yahoo and saw things not meant for the eyes of the timid or the faint of heart. Then I lost interest and went outside to chase some birds around with a kazoo. But that’s really as far as our sleepy lazy asses got in the cheering up Mike department. Then we were sitting around on a Saturday night and I hit on it. “Hey Mike, you should probably have a beer or a hard lemonade or something. Alcohol chases away any and all girl problems, and friend, you have a girl problem. Ask DW when he gets back. That man knows stuff!” “Yeah, it’s pretty much a scientific fact that booze solves problems,” chimed in someone in the next room, as I heard the sound of glass breaking. “You know what guys, you are right. I should have a beer. But just one.” I gave him a beer and as he drank it I said “Yes….drink up my sober friend.” and laughed a laugh of the mentally ill and the brilliant killer of spies as I heard the song that’s played when Darth Vader shows up. Yes, I know it’s called ‘The Imperial March’ but I didn’t want to say it. Are you dorks happy now? Anyhow, I think my subconscious was hinting at things to come.

Mike was on his 3^rd beer and turning bright red and dopy by the time DW came back from wherever it was he went. Work, school, family stuff, or in my opinion, late night crime fighting, we never found out. Mike was smashed, I was DUI tipsy and the girls we had over were too scared and young looking to drive to the scary liquor store so we needed DW to take us. And after causing a small scene at Giant Eagle, since the liquor warehouse in town was closed by the point DW had gotten home, by laughing at everything, we all settled back for a long evening of drinking until our ailing newly single friend couldn’t feel feelings anymore. With the drink fridge filled, and a Dairy Mart of possible mixers right out back, I started making random drinks for the sad red man sitting on the mattress in my kitchen giggling. Rum and coke is what we finally all settled on. And hard lemonade. Then came the shots. SNL was on and we decided to drink for everything that wasn’t funny. That’s the last full memory I have of the evening.

I woke up the next morning with a horrible pain in my back and tried to figure out why. I got up and walked crookedly to the TV room expecting to see a very hung-over person sleeping on my couch. I instead see DW with a cut on the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes, a steam vac puttering on a dirty patch of carpet, and a guitar in his hands. “Did you throw up in my bed?” was the first thing he asked me as I sat down and he shut off the Hoover. “Maybe? I don’t think that’s something I would do. I don’t think I threw up, but I may have. If I did I’m sorry” I said as I lit a cigarette and took a sip of Man-Coke. “Where’s Mike? His car is still out front and he was pretty crazy from what I remember. Hey…what happened to your nose?” He was in the middle of telling me that someone drove a super drunk Mike home and he’d spent the last half hour steamvacing the carpet when the phone rang “Are my shoes and car still at your house?” Were the first words out of the phone. “Yeah they are. You need a ride, or are you in jail?” He answered yes and no, in that order, and I was out the door. We needed to figure out why my back hurt, what happened to DW’s nose, how Mike got home, and why The Jim was sleeping in the yard next to my car. He was using a pizza box as a pillow, if I recall correctly. From the look of things, we had a mystery; a mystery with at least four pieces.

After picking up Mike, waking The Jim and eating Advil like a slutty girl pounds Skittles we all sat down to put together the night. “How did I get home and why do I smell like vomit?” were the first questions, asked by Mike. “Brad came over and took you home when you got sick all over the carpet. Rum and carpet cleaner is all you’re allowed to drink from now on, man,” Said DW as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I kind of remember that,” I said as I snubbed out my 50^th cigarette of the day. Just then Hot Glen (I didn’t pick that nickname for him, it was there when I met him.) walked in and laughed his Glen-laugh. “Well…that was a fun evening to come home to after work,” and plopped down on the couch to smoke a cigarette. After he got some coffee in him we at the Hangover Detective Agency were able to persuade Hot Glen to relate the evening that he remembered. I call people like Glen ‘Black Boxes’ or ‘Narrators’ because they remember pretty much everything that happened the night before because they didn’t get there until later in the evening. They can jog your memory of the evening and fill in the gaps in the story the next day, and can tell you what had happened after you passed out. They are a gift and a curse. Sure, you can find where your pants went, but you still don’t know why you threw them on the roof. Plus they tend to lord information over you, and throw rocks at you, the next day as you fish your wallet out of the gutter.

From the memory jogging Hot Glen gave us and the evidence we were able to ‘booze clues’ together CSI: Oregon style it was a great party. We were pretty late into pounding shots like they cured cancer when Glen got off work. Then my Beastie Boys DVD got put into the DVD player and a freshly drunk Mike started to dance and sing ‘Sabotage” and scream “play it again!” “Um….it is still playing, man. Right this second. You are, in fact, singing along with it.” We’d answer with confusion. “Well play it twice at the same time!” was the response he dished out. “Dude….that’s not even possible…..it defies time and space. I refuse to defy the rules of time and space in this house! Someone better get the bucket. ” And we all know what the effects are to jumping on a couch while screaming “play it twice at the same time!” and singing after pounding shots. That’s right, class, vomit. And lots of it. I had given our newest drinker the Pringles bucket I bought at the thrift store for just that purpose. And surprisingly our newly minted drunk grabbed it when he started feeling the bubble gut and threw up into it as per instructions. But he forgot the laws of time and space once again. He was holding the bucket over his head while vomiting: a mess on the carpet, a mess everywhere. As I was standing there laughing at his misfortune, fate stepped in. Fate had taken the form of DW at that moment, and poked me in the ribs while yelling “POKE!”. And being the ticklish little bitch I am, and being retarded drunk, I giggled like a flirty school girl. Which made DW yell “Hey everyone! Looks like Susan here is ticklish!” as he body slammed me on the couch and tried to make me pee with laughter like the junior high girl I sounded like. What he hadn’t counted on was me landing in the vomit. I went from trying not to pee my pants to covered in 2^nd hand rum and food in a split second. So I jumped in the shower and threw my clothes in a pile, and decided to rejoin the party when I was cleaned up. From what computer simulations can tell, and from several eye witness accounts, I was tickled again, before I had even gotten redressed and came very near the vomit for yet a second time. At this point I went from giggly drunken girl to angry half naked man with no shirt and decided that I was going to teach DW a lesson in manners: Fight Club style. I am told that I then punched DW in the face and bum rushed him in the gut, and the cut between his eyes matched the ring I was wearing so from reenactments we deemed that bit of information to be true. From there, we somehow fought our way to the kitchen mattress and I slammed his head into the window sill as he bear-hugged me from behind to calm my drunken ass down. As he nearly passed out, he threw his knee in my back and told me to give up. “”I will NEVER give up!” I shouted as I’m sure ‘Eye of the Tiger’ played in my head. That’s when the knee got driven in deeper and I got folded in half like a cheap suitcase. But I was still not going to give it up. So he the only thing he could moved his arm from around my chest to around my throat, thus cutting off my air. “Give up, drunken asshole: Even Rocky didn’t win in the first movie!” my lungs screamed to my foggy brain. “I give up!” I croaked out as DW let me go and air returned to my brain. “So that’s why my nose has a cut, and his back hurts, but what about Jim waking up in he yard, and Mike, why were you being dogshit crazy?” Asked DW as he rubbed the ring shaped mark on his nose. A call to Brad answered one of those questions. “I called to see if anything was going on and you told me you had done the impossible: gotten Mike not only to drink, but that he was, in fact, drunk. So I had to come see it for myself. By the time I got there, Mike was throwing up into a bucket in the air, and you guys were either fighting or making babies in the kitchen, so Hot Glen helped me carry Mike to my car and I took him to his Dads’ house, while a very drunk Jim brought a pizza with him to watch us carry him. I assume then Jim waved goodbye, finished his meal, laid down and went to sleep or something” Brad said into the phone. Well, a mostly solved mystery wasn’t too bad for the boys at the Hangover Detective Agency.

To this very day, over 5 years later my back still feels it. I’m pretty sure he broke my spine and I was just too drunk to know about it. If I were to get an X-Ray and found out that my legs weren’t supposed to work and it’s a miracle that I can walk, I’m sure m legs would stop working. Mind over matter and all that. Many drunken nights followed but that was the first real party we had at the house. And the first step towards ruining the beige carpet.

Thanks for reading, but that’s it for now, kids.

Dr. R

To see where Mike went after being Donkey Konged into Brad's car read the crossover off all crossoverdom at:

http://biffcalhoon.blogspot.com